


Too Old to Cry

by elumish



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 23:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3787684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody told Rodney his parents were dead for three days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Old to Cry

Nobody told Rodney his parents were dead for three days.

He didn’t know until he got a phone call from a screaming teenager at two in the morning, four minutes after he walked into his apartment. “You son of a bitch. You’re the worst fucking brother ever, you know that?”

Rodney had been awake for forty hours straight, trying to solve a problem that just wouldn’t work, and had only left the lab because his lab partner had hidden all of the coffee and stimulants. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m very important and you’re not, so goodbye.” Though ‘very important’ might have been a bit of an exaggeration. But he was very smart, so important was coming.

The girl sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t you care about your sister?”

He was awake enough to wonder how this girl know his sister but not awake enough to bring himself to ask. “I do, but you’re not her.” Even he knew Jeannie’s voice, and that wasn’t it.

“Yeah, well, Jean’s busy trying to deal with a _funeral_ , so—”

Funeral. Someone was dead? It probably wasn’t someone he cared about, but Jeannie cared, so he should find out so he could get it right when he called her during their biweekly check-in. “Who’s dead?”

The girl laughed like it wasn’t funny. “Who’s dead? Who’s _dead_?”

And now she was repeating him. Jeannie really needed better taste in friends; this one wasn’t too bright. “That is what I asked.”

“Who’s dead?” And again. He was really going to need to talk to Jeannie about her. “Your parents, dick.” And then she hung up.

At that point, Rodney’s body decided forty hours was long enough to be awake and shut down.

\--

John saw his mother die.

The nurse in the hospital thought he hadn’t, and so did the doctor, and the social worker who sat with him while they waited for his father to get back from his meeting in Germany. Because he was smiling, and they thought people couldn’t smile when they were sad. But smiling was what John did, when he was happy, when he was sad, when he was angry, _so angry_.

The social worker kept asking him questions, and he kept giving the right answer, because other than smiling and doing useless calculations quickly in his head (his mother had had forty-three shards in her face, 68.2 in2 of windshield glass), he was good at giving the right answer. _How was he feeling?_ Fine. _Was he scared?_ He hoped Dave was going to be okay when he heard. _Had he been scared?_ A little. _He was being very brave._ Thank you.

And then they gave him a bottle of water (500mL, 16.907 fluid ounces, 2.1134 cups) and a package of dry cookies and left him alone. And he drank 177mL (doing the metric calculation was easer, and nobody particularly liked ounces or cups anyway) of the water and crumbled the cookies and stuffed them back in the package because if he tried eating them he would throw up, and he didn’t really want to deal with that.

Besides, fourteen was too old to be throwing up just because he was upset. Or to have nightmares like the ones he had had after Dave was kicked in the head by his horse and hadn’t opened his eyes and John had thought he was dead (one minute, twelve seconds).

So he wouldn’t eat so he had nothing to throw up, and he wouldn’t sleep so he had no chance to dream. Not that there would be anyone around to hear him if he screamed. Dave was doing summer prep work in Massachusetts, and his father was probably heading back to Germany (average flight time eight hours nineteen minutes) as soon as the funeral was done.

Now he just needed to stay awake until he got out of the hospital (one cracked rib, three lacerations on his cheek, one laceration on his neck, fourteen bruises when connection of bruise spots was counted as one bruise) and maybe he wouldn’t have to dream about a place that smelled like death and looked like fear and sounded like families he would never have.

\--

Rodney woke up on his floor, a bump the size of his ear on the back of his head and throbbing in his side. He got to the bathroom and had finished peeing and was washing his hands when his stomach decided it didn’t like the fact that his parents were dead.

Forty seconds into dry-heaving his stomach decided it didn’t particularly like doing that, either, and stopped trying to claw its way out of his throat. Two minutes after that, Rodney made his way to his feet to brush his teeth, because it felt like something had died and then started decomposing in his mouth.

And then he called his sister. By his calculations, it was just after seven Vancouver time so she should probably be up. She had always been an early riser, while he had always stayed up too late and woken after everyone else.

She picked up on the second ring, and she sounds tired. “Jean McKay.”

“Hi, Jeannie.”

There was a pause, one so long that he wasn’t sure if she was going to respond, and then she asked, “Why haven’t you come home?”

“I found out when your friend called me last night.”

Another pause, even longer this time. “Shit.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can get a flight out.”

“Why? You hated them.”

Because it wasn’t about them. “I don’t hate you.”

A small sound, like the breath had gotten to her throat and then just stopped. “Thank you.”

\--

The funeral had too many people.

John knew none of the people were there for his mother, or at least most of them weren’t. They were there because his father was rich and they had some level of investment in his father’s business, or wanted him to have some level of investment in theirs.

Dave was back, eleven (4072 days) and skinny and pale and trying not to cry because their father didn’t like crying. It wasn’t manly (twelve times). It wasn’t professional (seventeen times). It wasn’t appropriate (nineteen times).

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing with himself during the service. It was religious even though none of them believed, because it made his father look better to people with money, even though his father didn’t need any more money. People spoke; not John. People cried; not John. People drank; not John.

He was standing in the corner of the room, back to the wall, trying not to throw up or fall over because he hadn’t eaten in almost a day (17 hours 15 minutes) and hadn’t slept in even longer (37 hours 22 minutes) when Dave walked up to him.

“Dad’s looking for you.”

John swallowed down bile, which was basically the only thing in his system at that point, and pushed off the wall. “‘kay.”

Dave trailed after him as he walked towards where his father was holding court near the picture of their mother without the forty-three shards of glass in her face because nobody wanted to see that (not even John, but he kept seeing it), his mouth opening and closing like he wanted to say something but didn’t. Finally, he asked, “Did you see it?”

68.2in2 of windshield glass. “Yeah.”

“They said you were unconscious.”

“Yeah.”

Dave’s hand caught John’s sleeve, and he let him cling on, because he wanted to cling onto someone’s sleeve himself, and if he couldn’t, at least Dave should be able to. “How could you see it if you were unconscious.”

“They said I was unconscious. Doesn’t mean I was.”

“Oh.” Dave let go of his sleeve. They were near their father. “I wish she wasn’t dead.”

“Yeah.”

And then he stepped up to his father, who laid a hand on his shoulder like touch was something that they did, when this was the first time his father had touched him in years (742 days). “This is my son, John. He was in the car with his mother.”

\--

Rodney stayed with Jeannie for two weeks to deal with the logistics of the loss of their parents. He was appointed her guardian, though she was going to be eighteen soon.

\--

John’s father left for Germany two days later.

\--

Rodney knew he wasn’t the best guardian for Jeannie, but he was better than their parents, who had gotten in a car crash with each other leaving the divorce attorney’s office.

\--

John figured, with his mother gone, he should try to take care of Dave. It wasn’t like anyone else was going to.

\--

Rodney looked after Jeannie until she got pregnant, and then he didn’t speak to her again for four years.

\--

John left for Stanford at eighteen and joined the Air Force at twenty-two and never spoke to his father again.

\--

Rodney never told anybody how happy he was that his parents were dead. He figured enough people thought he was crazy without giving them that for ammunition.

\--

John never told anybody how much he missed his mother. It wasn’t something you talked about in the military, and besides, he was too old to cry.


End file.
